It was June 2015. Surendra Kumar, then-Additional Principal Conservator of Forests (Vigilance) in Kerala, was travelling from the state's capital Thiruvananthapuram to Thrissur at 6 am when he got a phone call from then-Minister for Forests Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.
"The minister asked me: 'Did you read today's newspaper?' I said I hadn't because I was travelling. He asked me to find a copy at the nearest stall and call him back immediately," Kumar, now retired, tells The Quint.
The minister was referring to a piece of news that had stunned all of Kerala that morning. It was about a local forest watcher named Kunjumon Devasey making a wild confession to the Kerala Forest Department – that he had allegedly aided poachers in the killing of over 20 elephants in the state's forests over two years.
"I was taken aback. The minister then asked me if the matter was serious. I told him that the claims, if found true, were very serious," Kumar recalls. Until then, Kerala had not reported any elephant poaching cases since the 1990s.
Thus began the state's – and perhaps even the country's – biggest investigation into elephant poaching and ivory trade involving a multi-gang racket that transcended borders.
Nearly a decade later, this investigation – dubbed as 'Operation Shikar' – has become the inspiration for Amazon Prime's latest series, 'Poacher', created by Canadian Indian director Richie Mehta and produced by actor Alia Bhatt's Eternal Sunshine Productions. Mehta's 'Delhi Crime' had won the International Emmy for Best Drama Series in 2020.
'Poacher' is set to be released on Friday, 23 February.
(From left) Alia Bhatt, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Richie Mehta, and Roshan Mathew at the launch of the trailer of 'Poacher'.
(Photo: X)
This multi-lingual show has Mollywood's Nimisha Sajayan and Roshan Mathew in lead roles; they play forest range officer Mala Jogi and intel analyst Alan Joseph, who are inspired by real-life field investigators Manu Sathyan and Jose Louies.
Their field director in real life, Amit Mallick, is played by Dibyendu Bhattacharya.
Speaking to The Quint over the phone, Louies, who heads the Wildlife Crime Control Division at the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), says: "When we were on the ground working on this case, we never thought a series would be made based on this investigation."
What Was the Investigation About?
When Kunjumon Devasey, then about 60, confessed to the forest department officials at the Karimbani forest range (which falls under Ernakulam district's Malayatoor forest division) about the indiscriminate poaching of the elephants in Vazhachal, Thundathil, Munnar, and Parambikulam wildlife sanctuaries, they hardly believed him.
In fact, he had to insist on getting his statement recorded.
As the news of his confession broke, Minister Radhakrishnan of the then-United Democratic Front (UDF) government ordered a probe – and the investigation team was led by Surendra Kumar, who now works as a senior technical advisor at the UNDP.
Kumar tells The Quint that within two days of reaching Malayatoor, he assembled about 100 people and launched a massive combing operation in the forest area, despite the dangers posed by the monsoon rains, based on Devasey's statement.
"Devasey's confession was very important. Without that, we had no evidence whatsoever. Based on his statements, we travelled through the forests, unearthing clues and links to poachers. Though he had assisted poachers, he was a man of conscience. And whatever information he gave was true," remarks Kumar, whose character in 'Poacher' is played by actor Vinod Sharawat.
Devasey – who appears as Aruku in the show's trailer – spent a year in judicial custody and jail before he was granted bail in August 2016.
The first phase of 'Operation Shikar', which went on for about six months, was a "silent one." "As we started getting leads, we soon realised who the major players were. Hunters, collectors, sponsors... We also got a diary from one of the poachers, containing the phone numbers of all the possible suspects. It showed us that the network extended far beyond Kerala," Kumar adds.
By the end of the first phase of the probe, chargesheets were filed against 72 persons – and nearly five gangs in Kerala and three outside the state were found to be involved. The racket extended to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, New Delhi, and West Bengal. Over 400 kg of ivory was recovered.
Some of the key players in the inter-state poaching network who were arrested included Eagle Rajan, an ivory trader, and Umesh Aggarwal, a kingpin of one of the gangs.
At various stages of the probe, the Delhi Police and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, too, assisted in the investigation.
"It was the biggest wildlife crime investigation – biggest in terms of the number of people involved, the biggest also in terms of the amount of ivory recovered, and the biggest in terms of geography," Kumar tells The Quint.
The non-profit organisation WTI also assisted the Kerala Forest Department in the probe. Louies, who was the WTI's point of contact in the investigation, says he offered technical support to the department.
A techie by profession, Louies got into wildlife conservation and wildlife crime about 20 years ago. His tech background and understanding of wildlife crime earned him a place in the investigation team.
"It was a meticulous investigation, and that is where we came in to assist the department because there was a lot of tech involved. It was a structured, technology-based investigation, and it was not done in a hurry," Louies, who hails from Kerala's Kottayam, says.
'Not Without Challenges'
The investigation, however, was not without challenges. "Truth be told, we were not prepared for such a massive operation," says Kumar.
"Protected areas like national parks are better managed. But in a normal reserved forest area, like Malayatoor, where this happened, there is a lack of protection," he adds. He also said that pressure from the Opposition and the media put the department in a difficult spot.
"During the course of this months-long probe, we didn't give out any info to the media because we didn't want the people who were involved to know that we were on to them," remarks Louies.
Another major challenge was unearthing the large network involved in the crime. "These poaching gangs were established over a period of time – and we found out that they actually met each other in courtrooms. Many of them were part of different gangs and they had previous cases against them. Some of them had the same lawyers, and when they came for trials, they began planning these crimes outside courtrooms," explains Louies.
"This is how they created such a network. For us, the major task was to understand how they connected. From an investigation strategy point of view, usually what happens is you just look at the first person. Here, we had to go back and forth a lot."
Louies further remarks that the "the difference between the series and the actual investigation was that we never got a cut-retake opportunity. We only had one take. We couldn't make any mistakes."
He, however, was all praise for Richie Mehta for "going into the details of the crime."
"This show is going to showcase how things actually happened. There is no glorification, nobody is a superhero. Everyone is a human being. Within our limitations, within our skills and available resources, we were doing what we could," he adds.
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